


Soft Touch, Tough Soldier

by justreadingfics



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, F/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, english isn't author's first language, mention to smut, mention to torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 13:05:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17023149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justreadingfics/pseuds/justreadingfics
Summary: You don’t have a life of your own anymore. You are theirs. Just as much as he is. Despite the horror you both live in, you find each other.





	Soft Touch, Tough Soldier

Washington, DC. Apparently this was going to be your new home for a while. At least it was what you had heard some of them saying. Not that it matter in any way, not that you were allowed to leave the constricting walls of whatever shitty facility they chose to operate.

You didn’t have a choice. You wish you could even remember what it felt like to walk on the street of a city, to feel the air around you, to listen to the mix of noises showing the place was alive, that you were alive… But you couldn’t. You didn’t have a life of your own anymore. You were theirs. Just as much as he was.

You sighed profoundly, biting the nails of one hand, while the other fumbled with the buttons of your white coat, and your foot tapped repeatedly against the floor. Why was it taking so long for them to bring him to you?

It had been long since the last time he had been out of Cryo. Your patient, your Soldier, your love… The only anchor that kept you holding on to this life. It had been 7 months and 12 days since you last saw him. The longest period you’d ever gone without a glance of his gorgeous face since you got to that hell, three years before. Now you were so close to see his oceanic gloomy eyes again, but every minute seemed like a painful eternity. They must had something big and atrocious planned to keep him guarded for so long. The thought of what kind of nasty mission they undoubtedly had prepared for him made your stomach twitch in knots.

The nerve-racking waiting and the longing to see him soon draw your mind to the very beginning.

~~~~

You had freshly graduated from Harvard Medical School followed by a residency in Neurology. First in your class, receiving all the honors possible, with a backpack full of dreams to pursue hanging on your shoulders. That’s the reason why when one of your Professors offered you an opportunity to be part of a big and intriguing research program of a mysterious organization you didn’t even blink twice before getting on board. Who would have thought that your dear Doctor List was actually a leader of the dishonorable organization called HYDRA?

At first they tried to brainwash you with their sick philosophy to make you stay. But, when it didn’t work out as expected, they started using what they knew best. Torture. Pain. Intimidation.

Every escape attempted meant at least one broken limb for you. Not to mention the constant threats against your family members. So, at the end, you were left with no choice other than to give in to your new life as a HYDRA Doctor.

Your job would consist of evaluating and treating an asset of theirs, one they kept in cryogenesis and took out only for missions. You should check for any brain damages resulting from the process and from other perverse techniques described in his medical file, which forced your heart to be scrunched while reading it. Basically, you had to assure they wouldn’t fuck him up to the point of no return or make him useless for the organization plans.

You would never forget the day you first met him. Just like now, you were anxiously waiting for them to bring him to you. But your anxiety wasn’t caused by the same reason then.

Then you had been terrified. You knew nothing about his life, his backstory, but you were aware of the wiping process and the horrific brainwashing methods he was constantly submitted to. Yet, he was HYDRA’s deadliest weapon, so your expectations rested on that, and not on the fact that when two guards rushed into the room, startling you and placing him roughly in the treatment chair right to your front, you would meet with the bluest pair of eyes you had ever seen.

The two guards stepped away to stand by the door while you did your work. Your eyes were fixated on the broad figure that sat in front of you, wearing what you understood to be a tactical gear. A rough leather vest with no sleeves, exposing both his flesh and metal arm, which you knew about by reading his files, but what really held you interest was how dead his beautiful eyes remained.

He didn’t look up at you, he didn’t even acknowledge your presence or the whole situation which surrounded him.

Your breathing was erratic while his remained impassive. Though you weren’t afraid anymore, there was another rush of feelings surfacing inside you which you couldn’t quite put a finger on. How could someone seem so menacing and helpless at the same time?

You took in a deep breath to put your feelings on check and start the examinations procedures. The least you wanted was a punishment for being distracted. So, as you were used to doing during your residency, you explained to him everything you were doing and were careful to ask for permission before every single one of the procedures, even if all your words seemed to be falling into a void as he lingered silent and as still as a statue.

The images displayed on the exam machine shattered your heart. It was unbelievably heartbreaking how damaged his hippocampus and other essential parts of his brain were as a result of the endless wiping, yet you were amazed at the capacity of learning, clearly enhanced by the serum injected on his system.

When you were done with your work, you noticed, for a very unprofessional reason which most likely could get you killed, you weren’t quite ready to let him go. He intrigued you in a restless way. Against your better judgment, you slowly stepped closer to his chair after glancing at the both man guarding the door. They were engaged in a conversation with their back turned to you, so you felt confident enough to do what you had no idea why you needed to do.

You kneeled in front of the expressionless man. While his breathing was stealthily quiet, your ragged one assaulted your ears. He didn’t flinch or look directly at you, not even when you propped yourself with your hands on the arms of the chair with your face inches from him. You couldn’t believe how handsome he was with those chocolate locks brushing his features, some strains wet in sweat and glued to his skin.

But when you couldn’t help yourself and raised a hand to tenderly cup his scruffed jaw his eyes flicked swiftly to yours. It didn’t startle you, instead, his baffled stare and the sway of his chest showing the increase of his breathing only urged you to say what had been haunting your mind ever since you read his medical file. “I’m sorry…” you whispered, meaning your words.

His forehead furrowed while he blinked several quick times, and, opposing the former deadpan expression, in his eyes you saw fear, confusion, sorrow, but you also saw softness, curiosity, and appreciation. His beautiful, slightly parted lips were trembling like there were words trying their way out of the prison of his mind.

The sounds of his heavy breathing mingled with the thuds of your heart against your chest. Hypnotized by the beauty expressed in his gaze. You missed when he hesitantly lift his metal hand to lightly coat the one you had caressing his cheek. The sudden icy touch prompted a gasp out of your throat and sent sparkles all over your body, but you couldn’t move your hand away from him.

Right then you realized how much trouble the Soldier would be for you.

You weren’t wrong. That very same night you had a piece of that trouble, while you were lying down on your single bed in what your capturers liked to call a bedroom but you knew as your cell. With your back turned to the door, you didn’t see or hear him coming in, but you felt his overwhelmingly quiet presence behind you. An unbidden wave of fear ran down your spine making your eyes widened and your body tense. You made sure to slow down your breath, but you knew it was of no use.

His enhanced senses weren’t a secret to you, he would know you were awake.

The attack you were expecting never came. He just stood there in the dark inside the small room, staring at the back of your body, you assumed. Unexpectedly but not in a unwelcoming way, the whole situation ceased to be frightening to you when some curious feelings started to inflame your insides from the bottom of your core, and you felt your whole body relaxing, even if you never turned to face him.

His brooding presence was somehow comforting and the risk involving the situation was… insanely alluring to you. You knew he had gotten closer when rushes of hot air coming from his breathing enticed goosebumps to erupt all over your skin laid bare by a tank top and shorts.

You took in a sharp intake of air, your whole body shuddering when a cold metal finger touched ever so lightly the place where your skin was exposed on your low back and moved all the way up to your neck, unhurriedly making its way down again to the starting point, getting close to the band of your shorts. It became an almost impossible mission to suppress the yearning, dirty sounds fighting to escape from your lips as an expression of sheer arousal. Before you could show any further reactions he was gone.

He left as stealthily as he had got in.

It left you panting and feeling cold lines of sweat running over your skin, trying to understand what had just happened and why you were feeling that way, like there was a magnet pulling you over to that man. A man whose name you didn’t even know, if he had one at all.

During the protocol of the examination session the next day, and the subsequent ones, whoever watched the interaction between you two saw nothing but stoical behavior coming from him and professional manners on your end. It was amazing how bad guys couldn’t figure out anything beyond hate and fear, so the touches that were prolonged more than necessary and the affection coloring the gazes of both of you meant nothing to them.

That first night was followed by another, and another, and another. He always adopted the same pattern, standing inside your room watching you on your bed before running his metal finger over the usual path on your spine, never exchanging a single word with you. Most people would see that behavior as disturbing, but God knew how much you longed for those hushed minutes with him.

Afraid of scaring him off with a sudden move, you remained on the same position to allow him to come closer and touch you. You couldn’t sleep before he arrived and struggle to close your eyes after he would leave you.

You both kept this dynamic several nights and days until the craving for more of him took the best of you. During one particular night you decided you hadn’t had enough, so when you felt his presence behind you and the familiar cold touch of his finger, you boldly turned around, grabbing his flesh wrist when he promptly moved to get up from where he was kneeling by the side of your bed.

“Stay,” you whispered.

He kept looking at you with widened eyes but with an unreadable expression, keeping himself deliberately in place since he could easily unraveled himself from your grasp.

“I need you to stay,” you kept on without averting your eyes from the ones which had the power of melt your heart. “I need you to touch me,” you huskily confessed while softly guided his flesh hand to cup one of your breasts, feeling an electrifying coil squeezing your core when his hand met the covered mound.

His mouth had been long opened, then his eyes closed and his heaving chest proved how hard breathing was becoming for him, just like it was for you.

“Please, I need you…don’t go away…not tonight, please,” you pleaded, not caring how pathetic you were sounding. You needed this man, that was the simple truth, and you wanted anything but to run away from the feeling.

He snapped at your breathy supplication, and the walls he had been struggling to sustain between you two crumbled down when he pulled you closer with his metal arm, and leaned forward to press his lips to your begging ones with unrestrained passion. Soon, skin met skin and your searing sweaty bodies became one until the despair of your touches burned in a fiery pleasure you had both been deprived of for too long.

You didn’t count how many times he had taken you that night. He couldn’t get enough of you just as much as you needed to feel him, to be closer and closer, to have him inside you. 

From that unforgettable night on, your life with HYDRA consisted of enduring whatever you had to just to survive and wait for your encounters with the unnamed soldier, whether it would mean the wordless, ardent nights inside your bedroom or even the chance to furtively touch him in the medical bay.

So, it did nothing less than break your heart on the occasions when they wiped his brain so much he wouldn’t remember you. At least, at first when they sat him down on the chair before you, but at night he rarely failed, always finding his way back to you, somehow breaking through the barriers of his own mind. When it came to you, you were each and every time waiting for him, eager for his both soothing and ravenous touches.

~~~~

That day in that dreadful facility in Washington, after so long he had been on cryo, depriving you of his warmth, you had no idea what his reaction to you would be. Would he remember you? Would he still find his way to you, no matter what?

The clench in your stomach constricted further when, like a replay from the first time you’d seen him, two guards stormed into the room, dragging and pushing him into the chair. The hatred in your eyes aimed at the HYDRA assholes for the unnecessary violence of their actions soon turned into worry for the numbness the gaze of your lover displayed, like his soul had been detached from his body.

In a way you knew this was what they did to him with the wiping. The anguish in your heart almost made you gasp when he didn’t respond like he usually did to your gentle touches disguised in medical techniques.

Defeated, despite trying hard but gently to trigger him into recognizing you, all there was left was fighting against the tears forming in your eyes and go on with your procedures, silently hoping for the night to bring him back to you.

But your hopes were in vain. He didn’t search for you that night, and the next day, when you were with him again, he still didn’t seem to recognize you, keeping to his emotionless behavior.

There was something wrong…

Your heart sank, and your concerns were confirmed when the exams you ran on his brain showed that the recent wiping had been even more damaging than the previous ones. When you tried to argue with the doctors responsible for the procedure they only explained that the orders had come from above. Apparently the missions he had been assigned for required so. When you tried to reason further, they said, with a scientific interest and nothing else, that they knew how harmful this could get for the “asset’s proper functioning”, but they couldn’t do anything. It wounded you extremely to acknowledge that neither could you.

You spent the next couple of nights in tears alone in your room. You cried for his absence, but most of all you cried for being so helpless while you witnessed them tearing him apart. You would do anything to give it all back to him, whatever the life HYDRA had stolen from him, as they had from you.

You caught yourself wondering about the man you never knew, the man behind all of that horror, behind the soldier, what was his history? Had he been happy? Did he have a family looking for him? Friends? A girl? You guessed you would never find out. You didn’t even know how old he was since the medical file delivered to you was restricted to the minimum necessary and the cryo process made it hard to estimate.

On the third night you had lost hope he would ever feel him in your arms again. That was until you got out of your bathroom wrapped in a towel after a shower and met with his brooding presence inside your room. The smile which instantly curled up your lips faded as soon as you took him his demeanor.

He was wearing his tactical gear, covered in dirt, hair disheveled, strained all over his face while his jaw remained clenched and his hands were balled into two fists. He was staring intensively at you, but you couldn’t read his expression.

You noticed bruising over his neck you knew would soon be gone, but it didn’t stop you from worrying.

However, you didn’t know what to expect from his gloomy and unsteady presence, so you fought off the urge to run to him and wrap him in your arms, remaining cautiously still by the bathroom door, waiting for him to move first.

His tongue swept over his lips before you heard his voice for the first time ever. “I know you,” he stated, a rough gravelly sound, but instead of the expected menace, you heard vulnerability in his words.

This and the sentence itself were enough to send you running in a straight line to press your lips against his shaking ones. His muscles seemed to relax under your touch when you cupped his face between your hands, and he circled one arm around your waist bringing you closer to him.

Reluctantly you broke the long delayed kiss, but didn’t step away from him. He rested his forehead against yours and sighed once again, “I know you.” This time you heard a bit of relief in his voice.

“You do… you do, my love, you know me,” you hurriedly confirmed, running your hands to the nape of his neck, tightening the embrace, afraid he would slip through your fingers again.

You felt his muscles going rigid like before, and you stopped breathing, afraid you had gone too far with your affection and had triggered him somehow.

But his hold on your back over the towel separating your body from his hands became stronger and he added softly, “And I knew him…” 

Frowning, you leaned back but kept your arms around his neck to watch his face. What you saw was despairing confusion while he tightened his lips and narrowed his eyebrows, forming a grimace. “Who?” you asked.

You felt his heart become erratic against his chest when he responded. “The man on the bridge, I knew him.”

The vulnerability expressed in his words and in his whole body language was almost palpable and you wished you could do something to help him, but then heavy boots and words spoken in Russian were heard coming from the corridor outside your door. You desperately took your lips to his again, then pressed your chest against him, enveloping his body in a close-fitting grip, resting your chin on his metal shoulder and diving a hand on his hair.

“I thought I had lost you. I can’t lose you,” you whimpered, not even trying to fight the tears. 

He nuzzled in the crook of your neck taking a long inhale of air, as if he was making sure to engrave your scent in the deepest part of his mind. “I have to go, but I don’t want to leave you,” he confessed in a low but firm voice against your skin.

Somehow you managed to form a smile through your tears. You leaned your head away from his shoulder to once again look at him, sliding one hand to caress his jaw like the first time you had ever touched him. “They can’t see you here with me, my heart… but I’ll be always waiting for you, no matter what, you have to know this. And you will find me again, won’t you?” You didn’t know if you were trying to reassure him or yourself with those words.

His metal thumb wiped away a tear rolling down your face, and your soldier once again warmed your lips in a kiss, sweet and soft, but full of longing. “Always,” he breathed after giving you a final peck and looking down at you with a blazing conviction in his eyes which left you with no choice but to believe his promise.

But a few moments after he was gone, you found yourself curling your body in a ball on the floor, listening to his excruciating screams echoing through the corridors. They were wiping him again, and you knew it would be even harder this time.

Whatever happened on that last mission had triggered him to not just remember you, but also this said “man on the bridge”. If they noticed any of that, they would definitely make sure to delete everything they could so they could keep their compliant machine.

You cried yourself to sleep with the dreadful feeling it wouldn’t be easy for him to keep his promise.

~~~

It all happened in a blur, like you were a spectator of your own life.

The evacuations sirens were filling your ears and your thoughts couldn’t follow a coherent line. All you knew was you had to move. You knew a situation like this would come at some point. It meant you had two choices: to vanish on your own or they would vanish with you.

You chose the first option and for the first time in a long time you gathered the courage to make an escape. The chaos worked in favor of you and other prisoners to run away from the facility. Against all odds, you were able to walk on a city street again. No, not walk, you had to run for your life and couldn’t really enjoy the foretaste of freedom.

While you made your escape, you heard a word here and there and slowly you managed to catch a glimpse of what was the cause of all that buzz. Apparently a woman they called “Black Widow”, who was part of SHIELD (a name you had heard before as one of HYDRA’S major nemesis), exposed every file of both organizations, revealing its members and doings. You realized it meant you would be exposed as HYDRA associated as well.

Who would believe you were held there against your will? What would happen to you until you could prove your hostage situation, if you ever could achieve such thing? You would never go back to be at the mercy of any institution, not even the government. Then you understood you wouldn’t have to run just from HYDRA, but also from everyone else.

Another thing you learned was your beloved Soldier was actually James Buchanan Barnes who used to be part of the Howling Commandos you had heard so much about in history classes when you were little. Your heart caught in your throat to know that he was considered missing after a confrontation with his best pal, Captain America himself. 

The man on the bridge.

That was when you knew your fearful feelings had been right. You would never find each other again. You discovered, then, what numb emptiness felt like. 

To hold any hope of survival for yourself, you sank down deep inside the fear of a life without him, of a life of not knowing if he would be alright, of never having the chance to explicitly tell him how you felt for him, so you grasped all your hopes on the possibility that, yes, he was fine and finally free of the horror he had been imprisoned in for nearly 70 years. The faith you put on that thought was the only way you would be able to go on.

Lucky for you, one of the hostages who managed to escape by your side used to be a C.I.A agent, who identified himself to you just as Agent J. He helped you create a whole new name, a new home, a new life.

~~~

One year.

That was how long you had been succeeding on surviving after the apparent dismantling of HYDRA. You had serious doubts they had been fully defeated, but at least you had never been found by whatever might have remained of the hateful Nazi group, or by anyone else for the matter.

And anyone else included him.

There wasn’t a night that you wouldn’t dream of the touch of his finger sliding over your back. Sometimes you would get to the point of waking up swearing you had felt it for real, and it wasn’t just a product of your reveries, but he was never there when you looked for him.

You knew it in your gut he was alive. You knew what he was capable of and how the serum inside his system was strong enough to help him heal from the most severe injuries.

Yet the hope of him getting to you again never out weighed the certainty it was impossible. After all, you had disappeared without leaving any traces behind. Agent J. had picked a place for you he had considered suitable for someone who wanted to vanish from the rest of the world.

It was hard at the beginning to get used to absolutely everything there. But it felt like a paradise after HYDRA. Soon you found yourself a small apartment and a job at a coffee shop which helped you immensely with the language. Little by little you were building a life for yourself, a routine, blending in with the lifestyle of the foreign country, pretending you could be happy again someday, and get by the pang in your chest every single time you thought of him. 

One of your favorite things to do was to head to the local street market early in the morning before work to get yourself some fresh fruits.

So there was the place you were that morning. While you walked around the fruit stalls, the noise of the busy city had a calming effect on you, It was a proof that you weren’t a prisoner anymore, even if you would never get back to your old life. Feeling in a good mood, it lit up your eyes to see a stand full of your favorite fruit.

A smile slipped through your lips and you decided to stop and buy some of them to eat at your lunch break later that day since they looked so juicy and tender.

“Sunt prunele coapte?*Are the plums ripe?” you asked in raw Romanian, but still making yourself understandable enough to the attendant. You nodded and smiled when she answered positively.

“Ok, deci vreau…*Ok, so I want…” You never finished your order. The hand that was fumbling over the fruits froze in place when you felt it.

It was real this time.

Instead of metal, it was a gloved finger that met your lower back and slowly slid it’s way up, coaxing the little hairs on the nape of your neck to rise before descending back again over the familiar path which ached to feel that touch again.

All the air had disappeared from your lungs so you had no idea how you ended up able to whisper the words, “You found me.”

The whole world around you faded into that husky voice you thought you would never hear again.

“Always.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was part of a writing challenge on Tumblr. The prompt was: "I have to go. But I don't want to leave you." Please, send feedback! I beg of you!


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